So out of interest I looked on the internet the setting for Shenmue II when Ryo is in Kowloon. The place Ryo explored in the later half of the game actually no longer exists. The Chinese government tore the whole place down in the early 90's because it was not only disgusting, but it was an eyesore filled with crime and black market dentistry, medical, and anything illegal under the sun really. It was known as the Kowloon Walled City. There was no easy way to get into it other than some dark tunnels. Jackie Chan actually shot a scene for Crime Story in Kowloon and the explosions were real because the government had no problem in destroying the buildings. Shenmue actually made it look better than it actually was.

Yeah, yeah people called it home but it was so unsafe! I mean just check out the building Zhu Yuanda was living in. He could have slipped and fell off one of those planks bridging the floors before Ryo ever saw him and then what would have happened?

What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one.

Avon Barksdale wrote:Yeah, yeah people called it home but it was so unsafe! I mean just check out the building Zhu Yuanda was living in. He could have slipped and fell off one of those planks bridging the floors before Ryo ever saw him and then what would have happened?

He used the elevator, remember?

"The story is completed. The problem is we have not decided whether or not to move forward with designing the game yet." ~Yu Suzuki~

It is certainly one of the things that made Shenmue so special to me as when I was a kid I often dreamed of getting lost on a big building maze, with elevators that went nowhere, and secret passages and complicated routes.

That such a place existed was incredible and I regret that I never had the possibility to witness it in person.

Once I even attempted to translate (from an english translation of course) the journal of the expedition that a group of Tokyoites had undertaken just before the city was demolished. I believe they were in fact the last foreigners to enter the city.

For me it was certainly one of the wonders of the World, so extravagant that it just didn't fit.